“There are severe clashes,” said Ahmed Danees, the head of foreign relations for the PKK. “Two Turkish soldiers have been killed and eight wounded. There are no PKK casualties.” Turkish television said that the number of Turkish troops involved was between 3,000 and 10,000, and they had moved 16 miles inside Iraq.

But the escalating Turkish attacks are destabilising the Kurdish region of Iraq which is the one peaceful part of the country and has visibly benefited from the US invasion.

The Iraqi Kurds are America’s closest allies in Iraq and the only Iraqi community to support fully the US occupation.

I just mention this because the media seems to be caught up in daily election fray fever and has deemed fit to largely ignore international news and the security implications for American troops in Iraq. Meanwhile Bush and Company are displaying the same ignorance of Iraqi tribal and religious that brought us MessOpatamia by arming and encouraging the next generation of terrorists, The Myth of the Surge

Now, in the midst of the surge, the Bush administration has done an about-face. Having lost the civil war, many Sunnis were suddenly desperate to switch sides — and Gen. David Petraeus was eager to oblige. The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq — it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq’s central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or “the Awakening.”

If your dad, mom, brother or cousin was injured or killed by an IED in the last couple of years near Dora, that IED was probably made by someone that is now a member of the sahwa. Terrorist is now officially a term of right-wing moral relativity. What else could one assume when you’re arming and paying off domestic insurgents that were just recently killing American troops.

But men who have taken up arms to defend themselves against both the Shiites and the Americans won’t be easily persuaded to abandon their weapons in return for a socket wrench. After meeting recently in Baghdad, U.S. officials concluded in an internal report, “Most young Concerned Local Citizens would probably not agree to transition from armed defenders of their communities to the local garbage men or rubble cleanup crew working under the gaze of U.S. soldiers and their own families.” The new militias have given members of the Awakening their first official foothold in occupied Iraq. They are not likely to surrender that position without a fight. The Shiite government is doing little to find jobs for them, because it doesn’t want them back, and violence in Iraq is already starting to escalate.

For those they are addicted to the endless analysis of the sociological side of the presidential race we have The Dude Vote,

In most cases, the Obama-McCain guys don’t prefer the male candidates because they explicitly, or consciously, want to keep the presidency an all-male club. But when they talk about McCain and Obama, they bring up characteristics that guys admire in other guys: independence, plain-spokenness, charisma, a willingness to take a stand, an ability to gain the country’s respect. They don’t object to a woman in the White House, they say. They just object to Hillary. Even though, in this election, that’s the same thing.

There does seem to an element of this in the race. Maybe Michelle Obama should rein in her pride in America’s current progressive wave if most Americans can look past race, but not gender. This isn’t meant to be a plug for any candidate. I’ve defended both Democrats against the Rightie noise machine and find the intra-party bickering very unfortunate. Just remember whoever wins leaves the looser still a prominent Democratic senator, so critics from both sides will find a time when their angry rant becomes free ammunition for people that don’t need more then they already have.

Karl Rove says he was contacted by CBS for comments on the mind numbingly corrupt rail-roading of Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D), but Rove thinks its unfair that 60 Minutes didn’t give him a head’s up that they were actually going to air the story. Rove also thinks his mom was mean for putting milk on his dry cereal. The never ending soap opera of Republican Victimitis, Rove denies 60 Minutes charges, claims he wasn’t contacted. Odd coincidence that the very segment where a former GOP dirty tricks operative was spilling the beans on Unka Karl was blacked out due to technical difficulties in stations across northern Alabama and that WHNT is owned by Robert Lawrence who has close ties to the Republican establishment as documented by Blue Girl, Red State.